


And Then Us

by ariel2me



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-24
Updated: 2013-08-24
Packaged: 2017-12-24 12:18:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,551
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/939927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ariel2me/pseuds/ariel2me
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Preparation for a wedding resurrects ghosts from the past. Sequel to Only You </p><p>http://archiveofourown.org/works/929541</p>
            </blockquote>





	And Then Us

“I will not do that to your father,” the king had said, when he refused Devan the Kingsguard. “I cannot rob him of his heir, his last remaining son.” The only one left to continue the Seaworth name, those were the unspoken words between them. “You will be Lord of the Rainwood someday. Do you understand?”

Devan nodded, and felt duly chastised. He did not tell the king, just as he had never told his father, that the thought of inheriting the land where his mother, Steff and Stanny had lost their lives filled him with dread and dismay. He did not voice his suspicion that he was not a man who should be entrusted with marriage, children and family, having lost so much of his family already.

Shireen had accused him of blind loyalty, when Devan first told her of his dream for the Kingsguard. “Is that all you can think of? Serving my father?”

To serve and protect. To be by the king’s side, always. Devan did not see what was wrong with that.

“It’s amazing how my father has somehow managed to inveigle so much loyalty from the Seaworths. Your father, your older brothers, now you,” Shireen had said, her voice full of contempt. Contempt for her father? Or contempt for Devan himself? Devan almost wished it was the latter. Shireen’s bitterness and anger towards her father was in a strange way reminding Devan of the king, and his own bitterness and anger towards his brothers. It was as if in adamantly trying to despise him, Shireen and her father were becoming more and more alike.

After Edric, Shireen had come to believe this as well. Believing herself guilty of a great sin too, she saw the two of them, father and daughter, as two sides of the same coin. “We’re both so convinced that we’re doing the right thing. His arrogance! I used to rail against that. _How dare he, thinking that he is the only one who knows best, the only one making the hard choices for the right reasons, when others are too cowardly to do so._ But I am not so different after all. I thought I knew best, about Edric. And look what came of that.”

“Perhaps it is a Baratheon trait,” Devan said, as a jest, to halt her self-recrimination. _You’re too hard on yourself, just as you were too hard on your father_ , he wanted to say.

Shireen, however, took his words seriously, not as a jest. She nodded glumly. “Perhaps. Perhaps our House words should not be _‘Ours is the Fury’_ , but _‘Ours is the Misguided Self-Righteousness’_.

‘ _Ours is All the Words Unspoken’_ was more apt, thought Devan, as he watched Shireen and the king tersely exchanging a few words at dinner.

“The Princess of Dorne –“

Shireen interrupted. “Yes, of course, Father. I would hardly forget to invite her, would I?” She paused. “Princess Arianne’s brother as well,” she announced, staring at her father defiantly.

The king’s expression darkened. “Shireen,” he said, just the one word, but loaded with countless warnings and implications.

“Prince Trystane will of course be bringing his lady wife with him,” Shireen continued, her gaze never faltering from her father. She waited for her father to object, but the king said nothing. “I want Cousin Myrcella at my wedding.”

“You wanted Edric to come back from his exile, and that turned out so well.” The words, said not with scorn or anger, but in a toneless, inflectionless voice, as if the king was merely reading out some historical facts, were all the more cutting and hurtful because of that.

“Your Grace!“ Devan’s father was the one who objected, glaring sharply at the king, who refused to meet his Hand’s gaze.

Shireen’s calmness was heartbreaking. “Myrcella will not stage a rebellion. She is not Edric, Father. She is still grateful to you for sparing her life and allowing her to stay in Dorne,” Shireen replied to her father, her voice as emotionless as his had been. “And you never tried to burn Myrcella,” she added, her tone just as matter-of-fact as before.

The king did not flinch, just as Shireen had not flinched when her father mentioned Edric. It would have been better if they had fought, argued loudly, shouted at each other, had scenes of tears and recriminations, Devan thought. The eerie stillness and deceptive calmness of most of their conversations were more foreboding than anything else would have been.

The moment passed quickly. They ate and drank quietly, the four of them, on a table too big for too few people. The ghosts of the dead stalked them, as it did every time the four of them were together. Devan’s father spoke of the guests coming from outside the Seven Kingdoms. Shireen told them her estimates for how much the wedding feast would cost. The king told Devan that no, of course Devan could not continue being Shireen’s sworn shield, now that he was to be her husband. “It should have been a Kingsguard in the first place, guarding the Crown Princess. Not just a knight,” the king said.

“Are you having second thoughts?” Shireen asked Devan unexpectedly, the next morning.

“What? No, of course not. Why would you –“

 “You were very quiet at dinner last night. You barely said a thing.” She searched his face carefully. He willed himself to erase any sign of doubt from it.

_This is not what I want for you, Shireen,_ he yearned to tell her. Marrying a man she did not love for the sake of the realm, for the sake of duty. Even if the man was Devan himself. _I want you to love, and be loved._ But the words would not come.

_She needed me to do this for her. This is her wish, her choice_ , he argued with the doubting voices in his head.

_You want her to be yours. That is why you agreed to the marriage. Nothing to do with Shireen’s wish or choice_ _at all._ The voices were not done mocking Devan, however.

It was Shireen, however, who looked more doubtful, who looked like she was having second thoughts. “Perhaps … I was too hasty and impulsive. The voices calling for another rebellion seemed to have died down. It seems that not many have the appetite for more deaths. Even those lords who were beseeching Father to remarry and father a son to be his heir have admitted defeat.” Shireen’s ascension as the Crown Princess had been met with loud protests and constant appeals to the king, telling him that he was still young enough to father a son. “The Seven Kingdoms has never had a ruling queen,” they insisted. The king had turned a deaf ear to their objections and refused to entertain any suggestion of remarriage.

“Devan?”

Devan said nothing, and his face betrayed nothing. Not surprise, not disappointment, not relief, not sadness - all the sentiments he was, in fact, struggling to reconcile. Shireen frowned. “Well?” She asked, impatient with his silence.

“You should do what you think is best, my princess,” Devan replied.

Knowing her of old, Devan expected Shireen to ask – _What do you think would be best, Devan?_ She did not always listen to his counsel – in fact, when it came to her father she most often ignored Devan’s words – but she had always asked for them. This time, however, she asked him an altogether different, and most unexpected, question.

“What do _you_ want, Devan?”

He did not reply, not because the things he wanted were things he did not want her to know, but because he did not know them himself. He had sworn off _wanting_ the day his father told him about the three unmarked graves in Cape Wrath. “It is just us now, Devan. I am so sorry, my son.” His father had wept, long and hard. Devan did not. The tears would not come; he had been too exhausted and worn out for that.

Clarity. He wanted clarity. Clarity of purpose and action. Deep down, he knew that was the real reason he wanted to be in the Kingsguard. To serve and protect to the end of your days, there was clarity in that. Clarity and simplicity; or so he desperately wanted to believe.

How was it, Shireen had raged at Devan once, that of the four of them, he was the only one who seemed curiously untouched by it all? “Even my father, cold and hard as he is, even _he_ has been irrevocably damaged in some ways. But you, you who have lost the most –“

She had stopped her tirade abruptly, and apologized. “I have no right to say that to you. Me, of all people.” They had never spoken of the matter again.

_I want to feel pain again_ , he would say to her now, if only he had the courage. Somehow, somewhere along the way, he had lost that capacity. No, Devan amended, he had not simply lost it as if it was a thing that could be misplaced so easily. Without fully realizing it, he had trained himself to lose it.

“What do you want, Devan?” Shireen repeated her question.

“You. I want you. Shireen.” To his relief, that seemed to be enough for Shireen. For now, at least.


End file.
